If you kept your abuse a secret. What would have helped you to pursue treatment/seeking help at different developmental points?

What would have helped:

Prior to age 10?

from 10 - 15?

from 15 - 20?

from 20 - 30?

from 30 - 40?

etc....

Think about it. What would have/could have/might have pulled you out of the soul crushing weight of silence? Where could the process have started?

I'm curious because for me, being female, I have options. I have a local abuse place, OB/GYNs ask about it as standard practice, there are hotline posters on restroom walls.

I don't see this type of support for the guys....for the teen boys who are struggling.....or for the little guys.... and to be quite honest it pisses me off.

The best connection for males and help that I can think of is doctors. My son saw his Dr a little while back and they talked to him about sex in general(he is 16). BUT not abuse. Why? Probably because they don't know that they are (IMHO) probably the best possible link for male victims and help. OB/GYNs obviously know this so I looked at the Amer. Med. Assoc. web site for a while but I didn't find much about specific policy.

Since I am a Nursing student (career change) I have Physician professors. I'd like to bring it up to them and ask about policy but I need to know the consensus about what would be helpful. Maybe I am totally off base with the Dr link.

If you kept your abuse a secret. What would have helped you to pursue treatment/seeking help at different developmental points?

I've been thinking a lot about that. For me, it would have been nothing short of different parents. They were not the CSA perps, but fostered such an atmosphere of worthlessness in me that no amount of talking by a professional was ever going to overcome that.

Its a shift in how we raise children. Its instilling an attitude of value in their own body, value in their voice. If they believe they are important, it will be harder for a perp to keep them quiet.

I agree with Obi, children must feel free to tell their parents anything, and as parents you need to take the bad and the good. The most important thing is to believe them, give them all the support they need and consider their feelings. To achieve this open relationship with your children you need to start from day 1.

Unfortunately, this is not possible in the case of incest because sadly the perp could be one of the parents.

Great Question Sugarbaby!Also, Thank you for being a supporter of your husband, your son and other guys like at MS :0)

I think the question has two parts.

(1) Those that haven't been abused. I think the guys above hit on that.

(2) The ones that have suffered abuse. I will give a few thoughts on that one:

The biggest part of the answer is "when they are ready".If you suspect someone has been abused you can support them and suggest things, but very gently.

It seems for many like in the books "Nice to Meet Me" and the stories on MS and my own story. Until your conscious mind is ready to deal with what happened, it will stay buried. It seems some remember and shove it down. I had absolutely no memory of what happened to me until a ton of stress hit in midlife that things started to leak out. I am still amazed that your mind can block that stuff out until you're ready to deal with it. Looking back I can see a few impacts to my life, but not until just recently did the eruption take place, the memories come back and I had to say, "I am going to do whatever it takes to get better!".

First of all, thank you for trying to understand and do something about this problem.

It's complicated and I tend to agree with Obi. There are eons of cultural expectations that both genders are given at birth. One of the expectations communicated to boys is that we should tough it out without complaint. As you might expect, this leads to a culture of silence that is ripe for exploitation by those with unsavory motives.

Beyond this, there is the issue of guilt that is interwoven in male CSA. Boys are told that sexual abuse is something that you just don't let happen---unless "you like that sort of thing." It's related to blaming female victims for being raped because she wore a short, provocative skirt---"she asked for it after all---with that skirt and all..." The male counterpart is "he let it happen."

That's nonsense. I didn't ask for it, I thought I was tough, but I was just a kid. When it happened to me at 13, I was embarrassed, ashamed and angry. That combination doesn't lend itself to disclosure to parents or doctors. I had(still do) have great rapport with my parents, but I still didn't want to tell. I didn't want to be seen as less than what I was before it happened. It isn't logical, but neither is CSA.

Like Obi said, this attitude has to change---even if it takes two generations. My experience is shaped by what happened to me---I was 13 and well into puberty. The perp was non-family. Victims of familial abuse, serial abuse---or young victims will have another set of issues.

I did not piece together the pictures in my head as representing sexual abuse until I was 12, so certainly nothing before then.

Maybe if there had been any serious sort of sexuality component to health class in my school (as opposed to just STDs, menstruation, and eating disorders.... really), or if I'd just opened up to anybody about my agonized struggles with what I now know to have been bisexuality / SSA starting at around the same time, maybe it could have led to some therapy and probing questions.

Maybe when, well into my 20s, I would faint during medical exams if the doc touched my balls, maybe if there had been some questions then.

Just about absolutely, I would have told sometime after 12 except that a particularly infamous pederast - a teenager - started using my teenaged sister as his "beard," to deflect suspicion. He got very close to my family, was over for dinner frequently. He never hurt me but when he was finally exposed it put my sister through hell and my parents were along for the ride. Seeing that destruction, and how upset they were, I never wanted to bring up the subject again. If not for him, I do believe I would have told, and gotten treatment sometime in my teens. It's almost like I'm his last victim.

What a great question. It seems that our society accepts the fact the women can be raped but not men. After I was beaten an raped I tried to approch a uncle and was told to "man up what did I do to cause it" Not once in my sixty yeard did anyone in the "health field as if "I was safe, if I was ever touched. Nothing, not in health classes, nothing, I did learn how to brush my teeth, wow, also I did not learn I had a prostate till sixty when it started to have big issues, the only thing I can take from this is that men just do not count. There are many "Women's health centers" I have not seen one for men. I guess men are made to bring home the pay check and go stand in the corner till it's time to go to work the next day.

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it is and has been quite a trip thru life, as last I feel that I am in a better place, it takes work and in my case a wife the was and is forgiveing and helpful. At last a relationship has gone right, messed up three.

I'm not a guy, but as someone who is going into the medical field as well I found some of the things you said about doctors being the best connection for help interesting.

I think it's definitely true that women who were abused have more resources than their male counterparts. It's unfortunate to be sure. I'm not aware that there would be any particular policy about asking patients about things related to abuse. Many physicians do screen for depression, but practices vary somewhat from physician to physician. Definitely Ob/Gyn physicians tend to be more tuned in to issues of abuse. They typically screen for domestic violence which tends to be perceived as something more of a "women's health" issue even though it is certainly not only women who can be victims of domestic violence and abuse.

I'm a medical student and I had my Ob/Gyn rotation a couple months ago. While on that rotation I spent some time in the clinic seeing women for their annual well woman exams. I got in the habit of asking each patient if she felt safe at home. One woman, when I asked her if she felt safe, looked surprised. She asked me why I was asking. I told her we asked everyone that. She then told me that her husband had in the past threatened to kill her. She went on to tell me that he had been a victim of CSA and a lot of it was coming out now. She said he had never physically harmed her and that she did feel safe. They had been working through it.

I suppose it is interesting that we put so much more emphasis about asking women these questions than men, but a part of me also wonders how many men would feel comfortable talking about it with their physician. As others have said, I think there is this cultural impression that men have to be tough and that they shouldn't show vulnerability. Though I don't suppose it would hurt to ask. Perhaps the best way to get responses would be to have some questions included on an intake questionnaire and then if any of the questions were answered positively the physician could bring it up.

Perhaps more than anything I think this is an issue that pediatricians should be very aware of. In fact, pediatricians are strongly encouraged to talk to patients both with their parents and separate from their parents, especially teenaged patients. Children may not realize what is happening at the time, but pediatricians can ask questions in ways that make sense to kids but also give a picture of what is going on. This seems to me to be one of the best ways of catching it early.

I really think public awareness is important and we should never ever blame the victim. It kills me that my survivor sometimes seems to think that he is somehow less of a man because of what happened to him. Truth be told, I think he is an incredibly strong man in every sense of the word and I try to remind him of that regularly. I hope all of the men on this site realize how strong they are too.

Although my abuse was in a different era, one thing that would have helped immensely would have been the school authorities who fired my perp for "sexual issues". Had someone - in fact, like a woman - followed up with me and his other possible victims it would have made a huge difference. I was 15-16.

The question, "Do you feel safe at home?" would have been a wonderful inquiry. I was in the frame of mind at that time to definitively answer, "NO." Intervention, however, was not available in that era. Even as a pre-teen in that environment - back to age 7 - I would have answered in the negative. I'd started to cry myself to sleep every night at that age.

Bitchmother was an obvious drunk, verbally and emotionally abusive. It would have been clear to any caseworker. And I desperately wanted to be with Dad instead, a healthier home environment, and being able to go to the boys school with my other buddies who lived on Dad's street.

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